Due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, F1 2020 is in the unique position of launching almost simultaneously with the real life 2020 season of Formula 1. With only last year’s performances and the increasingly limited pre-season testing sessions to base the game’s initial stats on, Codemasters has improvised to give us an early glimpse at this year’s challengers.

Right off the bat, the game’s dashboard features a message box with updates directly from the developer – one of the first being a performance update which tweaks the in-game stats based on real-life events. This will automatically apply to new championships and save profiles, and gives you the choice to apply this update across your existing campaigns.

As the ever-evolving season commences, we should see the game continuously updated too. As it stands, Williams and Mercedes are running their pre-season liveries and Racing Point are nestled comfortably within the midfield; however, as I write this on Saturday afternoon, Williams have lost their Rokit branding, Mercedes are rocking their all-black paintwork and Sergio Perez has just ended Free Practice 3 for the season opener in fourth position, behind only champions Mercedes and Max Verstappen. It’s something to keep an eye on and it’ll be interesting to see how often, and how quickly, Codemasters can get these updates out the door to keep the game relevant as this year’s shortened season progresses.

Either reflective of the current situation or a smart feature designed due to the fact that this year’s season was due to be the longest in history, this year’s game offers full flexibility over the races you want to include in your Career’s calendar. If you want to jump straight into the new Vietnamese and Dutch Grands Prix, then that is a (very welcome) option. 

In addition to the standard Career mode, My Team is not only the biggest new feature in F1 2020, but perhaps the most significant new addition the series has ever seen. Rather than simply rehashing 2019’s story mode, which saw you go up against a championship rival through a couple of Formula 2 scenarios before enduring a fairly bog standard career, My Team forgoes the cheesy dialogue between player and rival and instead adds a near-Football Manager level of intricacy to the game’s systems.

To be fair, Career mode in recent years’ games has toyed with the idea of giving you more control over your team, with media interviews boosting the morale of certain departments and almost-RPG-style skill trees allowing you to assign resource points to specific areas of car development, but it’s not something that Codemasters has ever ran with. This time, though, the management side is back and more in-depth than ever, offering you the chance to take on the role of team owner, so your responsibilities run much deeper.

Right off the bat there’s a good half-hour’s worth of gameplay in setting up your team and getting things started. The first step, after customising your driver and your team’s branding, is choosing where to spend your initial budget. Do you go all out on the supreme Mercedes engine and settle for a rookie from the lower Formula 1 ranks, or do you go for the cheaper – albeit slower and less reliable – Renault engine and invest in a renowned current Formula 1 driver? Beyond these initial decisions, you also need to sign sponsors who’ll bring in income for the team and pay bonuses based on performance. Naturally, higher-paying sponsors expect more performance, and it is admittedly a bit of a guessing game to begin with, but these are ongoing relationships and will constantly change throughout your career.

It’s between race weekends that you’ll be managing all of the above, and allocating your downtime to various activities to boost stats. You can spend hard-earned cash on new facilities, send your second driver off for a training day to boost his stats, or spend time undertaking sponsor duties for additional income. There’s no gameplay to be derived from these extra-curricular activities, and it’s purely a case of clicking “Advance Time” and watching your stats gradually increase, but it adds a fantastic layer of context to what is undoubtedly a brilliant racing game for a level of immersion that’s seldom found in this genre.

Onto the actual race weekends, and these take up the format that has been standard for a few years. Free Practice sessions have been cleverly “gamified” by Codemasters, with objectives such as tyre management and race simulation programmes giving purpose to these sessions, rather than simply acting as mandatory time trials to be skipped once you’re used to that particular circuit. Admittedly, these sessions can grow tiresome, especially during the course of a ten-year career, so you’ll be pleased to hear that you can skip these sessions if you’re willing to accept reduced resource points for car development. Still, it’s better than receiving no resource points at all, as was the case in previous games.

If you’re here purely for F1 2020’s management modes, you can also simulate the qualifying sessions and even the race, but honestly you’d be foolish to do so. F1 2020 is quite possibly the most authentic racer that money can buy. Codemasters has got the balancing down to a tee. If you’re a complete newcomer, the visual racing line, steering assists, traction control and anti-lock braking systems will all help you jump straight into the action. Similarly, turn all of these assists off and it really feels like there’s close to 1000 horsepower sitting underneath your right trigger finger (or foot, if you’ve got yourself a racing wheel and pedals).

It’s the flexibility of all of the above which makes the F1 games so approachable yet so addictive for fans of all skill levels. During my time with the game for review, I’ve played with nothing but ABS and medium traction control activated, yet it’s still possible to lock up the front wheels as you send a late braking manoeuvre down the inside of a hairpin, and all too often I found myself dumping the power down too early on corner exit and losing the back end. The assists are exactly that: they help make the challenges of driving a Formula 1 more accessible, yet don’t detract from the high octane spectacle of racing on the limit.

Aside from new features, one of the most noticeably improved aspects of F1 2020 in comparison with its predecessors is its AI racers. They feel more alive than ever. They’ll aggressively chase down your slipstream, and dive down the inside at the end of a long straight; they’ll swerve off the racing line to protect the inside line through a corner; and most interestingly, they’ll occasionally make mistakes that feel genuinely dynamic. It’s a small improvement on the face of it, but it just adds legs to the already robust single-player offerings.

Naturally, F1 has taken a big leap into the digital space for 2020, thanks in part to the introduction of the Virtual Grand Prix series in absence of any real racing. These virtual races were played by a combination of current Formula 1 drivers, upcoming youngsters from junior categories, and a handful of non-F1 celebrities for good measure. These were based on the F1 2019 game however, and I feel that the audience for online racing has grown ten-fold – especially due to our recent four-month absence from the sport. Thankfully, this year’s entry has stepped up to the plate with what feels like a live online platform which is sure to outlive the game’s natural life cycle – especially when you consider that this could be the final F1 game to launch on current-generation hardware. Weekly events will keep you checking back on the leaderboards, while there’s an entire section on the main menu dedicated entirely to eSports. It’s rare that I’ll go back to play a game post-review, yet with the sheer amount of content available in this package, I can see myself continuing to play this one for years into the future.

F1 2020 has plenty of substance, then, and it’s not without its style, either. It’s absolutely stunning to look at, most notably when it’s raining and puddles begin to accumulate on the track surface. Put on a decent pair of headphones and take Michael Schumacher’s iconic Ferrari F2004 for a spin, too, and you’ll be blown away by the sound quality. Not only do each of the four current engines sound unique and authentic to the real deal, but so indeed do the Formula 2 cars and the classic entries, too.

This entire game just reeks of quality, and can be exactly the type of racing game you want it to be. The new My Team mode will keep you busy for hours upon hours, but the management aspect does require more of an acquired taste. If you’ve played the 2018 or 2019 entries then perhaps you could be forgiven for sitting this one out, but if you’ve yet to experience Codemasters at its peak – or if you grew tired of the series a few years ago – then F1 2020 comes with a wholehearted recommendation from myself. This is as good as it gets.

-Martyn

A review code for this product was kindly provided by the publisher. Reviewed on Xbox One.

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